Enough!

by Rebecca Crichton

I retired from my 21-year career at Boeing in December 2010. That fall I had a conversation with a colleague. We were both 68 and he sounded wistful and somewhat jealous when he heard my plans. I shared what someone had told me: “You know you are ready to retire when you have enough and have had enough!”

The proverbial light bulb brightened his face. “I have both,” he announced excitedly. Later that week he let me know he was retiring too.

I often think about the concept of Enough. My self-inquiry includes variations on the theme: When is enough, enough? What is enough? Is it ever enough? Enough is the middle point of a spectrum, with Not Enough on one end and Too Much on the other.

Let’s face it, our society is predicated on never being or having enough. Consider the many ways we automatically default to wanting more: more money, more serenity, more hits on our websites, more information, more social media friends, more stuff!

And we often confuse having with being. At a Wisdom Café about letting go of our ‘stuff’ at The Richmond Beach Library, I told the group that we were not going to include guilt in our discussion. One man proudly declared that not only was he not guilty about all he had accumulated, he believed that the more he had, the better he was. He wasn’t kidding. He might well have been stating what others felt as well. He equated himself with his possessions.

Remember Goldilocks wandering through the Three Bears house in the woods? Everything was either too much or not enough, and what she wanted was something ‘Just right!’ What if we focused on what is ‘Just right!’ for us?

When we drill down into Enough, we are actually talking about saying ‘No’ to any given choice: No to more wine or water, no to another serving of cake, no to a new sweater or pair of sneakers, no to a new book on a favorite topic.

“I don’t need that,” I say when something rings my acquisitive bell. I can count on at least one friend to respond: “It’s not about need. It’s about want!”

And there it is, starkly revealed. If I want it, I can have it. What it costs might not matter. Or does it? Our choices cost us. Like it or not, there are some transactional truths to what we decide to do with our time, our money, our relationships.

So, what is enough? And in what realms does it matter?

The “good-enough mother” was first described in 1953 by D. W. Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst who argued that the good-enough mother was better than the perfect mother. Other researchers followed, showing how striving for perfection was more damaging than accepting each child for who they were as opposed to who the parent wanted them to be.

When do we let people be enough? When do we give ourselves permission to be enough? Nobody else knows what is ‘just right’ or enough for each of us. What matters is that we discover it for ourselves.